Monday, April 28, 2014

Delaware North, established in 1915 by the Jacob brothers to
sell popcorn and peanuts at theater concession stands in Buffalo, N.Y., soon
expanded into selling food at ballparks. The company (still owned by the Jacobs
family) has grown into a food service and hospitality company that operates
worldwide, with some 55,000 employees and annual revenue of more than $2
billion. Jeremy Jacobs, the current chairman and CEO, owns the Boston Bruins of
the NHL, and Delaware North owns their home stadium. The main About Us page
(“Who We Are”) is here.

OVERALL GRADE: B plus

Products/Services: B
plus

The text on the Delaware North About Us pages is excellent,
and the images are abundant and well chosen. Together they present a great
overview of the company’s products and services. One detail needs attention: navigation
and links. Our Commandment 7
of About Us pages is “Keep navigation easy.” The menus and submenus on the
Delaware North site aren’t always clear: the drop-down menu for Who We Are shows the
company’s operating divisions, but gives no indication that clicking on “Who We
Are” will take visitors to a page whose submenus include Company History, Family Leadership,
Company
Executives, Vision
and Mission, and Awards. Links
between pages should also be added. For example, on Who We Are, “100th
anniversary” should have a link to Company History.
“GuestPath” should be linked to the page dedicated to
it.

Incidentally, linking content makes it easier for those who
create and maintain the site to spot content that’s inconsistent. In Delaware
North’s case, the philosophy on the main About Us page (“One company. One
brand. One vision”) isn’t repeated on What We
Value or Vision
and Mission. The main About Us page says the company has seven divisions,
but What We Do has
only six subheads, and the “Who We Are” drop-down menu has nine.

Personality: A minus

Delaware North’s Family Leadership
page features photos of the members of the second and third generations of the
Jacobs family, with information on their corporate responsibilities as well as
their qualifications. Well done, but there are some missed opportunities here. We
glimpsed, somewhere, an anecdote that in 1930, Louis Jacobs personally
delivered a sizeable refund check to the owner of the Detroit Tigers because Jacobs
decided the contract had unduly benefited Delaware North. On a second visit to
the site, we couldn’t find this anecdote – only a slightly different version in
an untitled
PDF. Why not feature such examples from the company history more prominently
– on the Company
History page and elsewhere - as a way to demonstrate its long-standing commitment
to honesty and integrity?

A pleasant touch on the Company History page: the company
name has its own little box that tells a corporate citizenship story (“The name
‘Delaware North’ hearkens back to the company's previous location at the corner
of Delaware Avenue and North Street in Buffalo, N.Y. Once Delaware North
outgrew the facilities, Jeremy Jacobs donated the historic mansion that once
housed executive offices to the University at Buffalo School of Management”).

The Timeline,
always an opportunity for smart graphics, could be so much better. It calls
itself interactive, but it’s basically a batch of photos (attractive) with type
that’s in graphic format (uncopyable) and thus hard to read. The only
navigation tool is a set of arrows, and there’s no way to smoothly scroll from
decade to decade.

Accessibility: C

The Contact
page offers emails for doing business with Delaware North, a link to the Jobs Section, a phone hotline,
and finally, an online form for less urgent inquiries. These options are
adequate, but it wouldn’t hurt to repeat (or at least give links to) the
information that appears on the contact pages for the company’s separate
operating divisions: Gaming,
Sportservice,
and so on.

TAKEAWAY

Especially in a family-owned business, who you were drives
who you are. Don’t miss the chance to include quotations or anecdotes from the
company history that illustrate your guiding principles.

Does your Web site’s “About Us” section
accurately convey your organization’s history and capabilities? Every two weeks
we evaluate one example, grading it in three areas that are key to potential
customers: Personality (Who are you?), Products/Services (What can you do for
us?), and Accessibility (How can we reach you?). To talk about your About Us
page, contact us!

Today’s example was chosen at random;
CorporateHistory.net has no ties to this company.

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

It was an antidote to the tragedy inflicted five months earlier, the assassination of JFK. It was an opportunity for NJ kids to ride the subway for the first time--the 7 train, built specially for the event. What else but the New York World's Fair of 1964-1965? I visited at least six times, led eagerly by my mother, who'd been a young woman during the 1939 Fair. She had great memories of that event and wanted to pass along her excitement to me.

I gained my first public perception of history there. The Pieta! The Sinclair dinosaurs! Belgian waffles! Corporate history too: who can forget Pepsi-Cola's salute to UNICEF ("It's a Small World" is one of the most earworm-producing songs ever), the Ford Mustang, and General Electric's "World of Tomorrow"? (When they highlighted the pre-World War II refrigerator, my dad called out "I recognize that one!") And how about the Westinghouse time capsule, pictured here?

Wish we had the equivalent today. Sure, the Fair was commercial, but Disney World and Las Vegas don't have the same nonpartisan scope. Great piece in today's Record newspaper by Jay Levin on a collector from NJ whose items are truly archival: http://bit.ly/QCU7rW.

Monday, April 14, 2014

Ernest Bateman Black and Nathan Thomas Veatch founded the
firm Black & Veatch in Kansas City in 1915. The company now provides
engineering, consulting, construction, and operations management in water,
energy, and telecommunications. It has completed contracts in more than a
hundred countries on six continents. With revenue of $3.3 billion, Black &
Veatch is one of America’s largest employee-owned companies as well as one of
its largest privately owned companies. The main About Us page (“Company”) is here.

OVERALL GRADE: C

Products/Services: D

There’s good material on the Company page, but the order
isn’t effective. The graphic at the top of the page, “Approximately 10,000
professionals in 100+ countries worldwide,” gives no indication of what Black
& Veatch does. The opening sentence of the text is no better: “Black &
Veatch strikes a balance that is rare for any industry.” The slogan in the
second sentence (“Building a World of Difference”) doesn’t seem clever until
one reaches the second paragraph, where we finally learn that Black &
Veatch does global engineering, consulting, and construction.

From this main About Us page, there should be links to the
pages on Black & Veatch’s mission, rankings, and awards, all of which are well
described elsewhere on the site. Other pages would benefit from some links as
well: why not send visitors from Rankings
to Awards, and vice versa?

On the main About Us page,
Black & Veatch makes good use of a narrow column at the right to offer a
PDF on the company, the company magazine (Solutions),
and an annual report. On some other pages, the right-hand column offers
impressive facts and figures about the company – unfortunately (again) without
links to further information.

Our Commandment 6
of About Us pages is, “Honor thy visuals.” The images on Black &
Veatch’s site are mostly cheerful office workers who could be from any company.
Are these stock photos? Why not show some photos of the spectacular projects in
exotic locales that Black & Veatch has worked on over the years?

Personality: C

The History
page has an unusual and helpful layout: a narrative account at left, a timeline
at right of about 20 events in the company’s 99-year history. The narrative
puts Black & Veatch into historical and global perspective, while
explaining how it grew to its current dominant position: an excellent piece of
corporate storytelling. It could be dramatically improved by including archival
photos. Such images (plus some headings) would also make that dense block of narrative
more enticing.

But about that timeline: has Black & Veatch done nothing
noteworthy since 2010? The timeline ends abruptly there. Our Commandment 10
of About Us pages is, “Remember to keep holy the updates.” Outdated
information suggests that no one’s sweating the details – not a good first impression
for a company that handles multi-billion-dollar infrastructure projects.

The bios of Black & Veatch’s current management (Executive
Committee) are standard format, with qualifications and current duties. None
gives much sense of who’s driving the company, or what direction it’s heading.
In an employee-owned company, this is a missed opportunity.

Accessibility: B

The Contact page helpfully
tells the Black & Veatch office nearest to you, based on location data in
your computer. Other contact information is standard: mail, general email, and
phone number for the company headquarters, plus an online form.

TAKEAWAY

If your company offers a wide range of services, use your corporate
history to show why they’re cohesive – and don’t forget to make it vivid with
images.

Does your Web site’s “About Us” section
accurately convey your organization’s history and capabilities? Every two weeks
we evaluate one example, grading it in three areas that are key to potential
customers: Personality (Who are you?), Products/Services (What can you do for
us?), and Accessibility (How can we reach you?). To talk about your About Us
page, contact us!

Today’s example was chosen at random;
CorporateHistory.net has no ties to this company.

Monday, April 7, 2014

The National Theatre Story, a 50-year history of London's great theater institution, fulfills the seven things an effective corporate history should do:

1. Know its audience. In this case, theater lovers and drama students.

2. Cover essential pre-history. The chronicle here reaches back to "false dawns in the early 1900s . . . on to its
hard-fought inauguration in 1963."

3. Assess the role of leaders. Even if your founder and CEOs aren't as exciting as the likes of Laurence Olivier and Peter
Hall, their DNA still remains in the organization.

4. Talk to key players in depth. Granted, theater people may be better corporate storytellers than others, but surely you have your equivalents to the 100 interviewees for this book, who included "Olivier’s successors as Director (Peter Hall, Richard Eyre, Trevor Nunn and Nicholas Hytner), and other great figures from the last 50 years of British and American drama, among them Edward Albee, Alan Bennett, Judi Dench, Michael Gambon, David Hare, Tony Kushner, Ian McKellen, Diana Rigg, Maggie Smith, Peter Shaffer, Stephen Sondheim, and Tom Stoppard." Don't forget the box-office folks, stagehands, costumers, and other behind-the-scenes contributors.

5. Dig into unpublished materials. Honor thy archives! Read those letters. Follow the dots between those folders to help shape the narrative. 6. Make it visual. The more photos, souvenirs, and artifacts, the better--and the layout should provide the logical frame. 7. Surprise; perhaps shock; definitely delight. Stories of political battles and disasters on-stage and off-stage add to the reality of this book about an institution whose main product is, in fact, artifice.

Bravo to author Daniel Rosenthal and the UK's Oberon Books for creating this volume.

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Kabletown is a leading provider of cable entertainment with
a tradition of commitment, service, and family values. The main Kabletown About
Us page is here.

OVERALL GRADE: A plus

Every page on Kabletown’s site qualifies as an About Us
page, and together they provide a near-perfect illustration of our Ten Commandments
of About Us pages.

Commandment 1: Know
thy audience. It’s as if Kabletown has read our minds: “If your ‘box is
being weird’ or ‘the thing just keeps saying “boot” or ‘the DVR won't stop
recording “Top Chef Masters” even though I hate it,’ we will be there.”

Commandment 2: Thou
shalt not generalize. Mission statements are often full of noble
abstractions that could apply to any company. But “Let Kabletown bring
entertainment to you, because you bring entertainment to Kabletown” – that’s short
and concise, and could never be mistaken for any other company’s operating
principle.

Commandment 3: Reveal
thy personality. The personality shines through from the opening explanation
of the company’s name: Kabletown, with a “K” for Kindness and Keen interest in
customers. We are profoundly reassured to know that the company is committed to
“respond rapidly to the speed of change.” And could a company be more caring of
its employees than to continue trying to resolve a flight mix-up that left 6
employees unintentionally “international”? For summarizing the management’s
style, you can’t beat the quote from CEO Hank Hooper on the Our Company page: “If you're
not part of something, you're just not apart of anything, darn it. And that's
really nothing. Ain't that something? Ha!”

Commandment 4: Don’t
take your own name in vain. Mergers and acquisitions rouse strong feelings.
To present its own side of the story, What’s New? announces the
acquisition by Kabletown of GE Sheinhardt NBC Universal. By the way, this page
demonstrates an awe-inspiring command of the use of SEO terms: “This way, not
only can we offer content in ways that content has never been offered before,
but we can use the word ‘content’ almost 60% more than we used to in press
releases. Our partnership with GE Sheinhardt NBC Universal will help us to
better serve you, the consumer. Content.”

Commandment 5: Honor
thy readers and their attention spans. The sole text on the Programming page is
breathtakingly, titillatingly brief: “For an additional $12.99, Kabletown now
offers you the highest quality in adult entertainment. You will be provided
with our easy-to-follow channel guide designed especially for our male and
female clients.”

Commandment 6: Honor
thy visuals. As a reminder of Kabletown’s commitment to family programming,
the header of every single page has a generously sized image of a family
watching TV together. (From the expression on the adorable tyke’s face, we
suspect it’s Celebrity Urologist.) On
Our Company, that big thumbs-up inspires limitless trust. As for
that maniacally cheerful employee on Careers ... how could anyone
even think of stealing his lunch and forcing him to write inane website
content?

Commandment 7: Keep
navigation easy. Kabletown’s site has an elegantly simple structure: Main,
News, Our Company, Careers, Programming. The pages have handy links between
them. Perhaps there should be an additional submenu to help zealous visitors go
directly to the TWINKS page (Television With Individuals, Naive, Kinky,
Shaved).

Commandment 8:
Remember to make yourself and your organization easily accessible. A minor glitch:
the Contact link at the foot
of the Kabletown page is linked to a subsidiary, NBC. Send us to The Office,
please!

Commandment 9: Worship
clarity. Gary does a great job, when he’s not in the hospital.

Commandment 10:
Remember to keep holy the updates. Tut, tut, Kabletown. You were perfect so
far, but why is there no coverage of the forthcoming merger of Kabletown with
Time Warner Kable?

Commandment 11: Remember
that blog entries are often time sensitive, and always check the date of the
post.

Does your Web site’s “About Us” section
accurately convey your organization’s history and capabilities? Every two weeks
we evaluate one example, grading it in three areas that are key to potential
customers: Personality (Who are you?), Products/Services (What can you do for
us?), and Accessibility (How can we reach you?). To talk about your About Us
page, contact us!

Today’s example was chosen at random;
CorporateHistory.net has no ties to this company.

CorporateHistory.net can help you turn your company history into an effective and beautiful book, DVD, Web site, keynote speech, or campaign. Whether you want to celebrate a company anniversary, honor a retiring CEO, or strategize your corporate storytelling, CorporateHistory.net can help. We believe organizations suffer when their memory erodes, just as people do. Your institutional memory is a stranded asset until you put it to work. Then it becomes a powerful, cost-effective tool for marketing, community relations, and employee pride.Please visit our website:http://www.corporatehistory.net/